Paramount Pictures had taken a big gamble with Rocketman, spending $41 million on the production and entrusting the lead role to an actor who wasn’t quite a household name (Taron Egerton), but the success of Bohemian - for which Rami Malek had won a Best Actor Oscar in March - augured good things.
Just months earlier, Bohemian Rhapsody, another rock-music biopic, this one centered on Queen’s Freddie Mercury, had pulled off a surprise box-office coup, raking in $911 million worldwide. When the Elton John biopic Rocketman opened at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2019, expectations were sky-high.
